EC joins Facebook to enrol voters

Kolkata: The Election Commission of India (ECI) is tying up with Facebook for a special drive to enrol left-out electors from July 1. That ECI is hopeful of enrolling more and more first-time electors through this “first-ever” initiative as generation Y is the most frequent user of the social networking site.

“On July1, a notification of the ‘voter registration reminder’ will be sent to people on Facebook in India who are eligible to vote. The reminder will be sent out in 13 Indian languages, viz. English, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Assamese, Marathi and Oriya. People have to click on the ‘Register Now’ button, and they will be directed to the National Voters’ Services Portal (www.nvsp.in) that will guide them through the registration process,” a senior official of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) office in Kolkata said, adding that such reminders would be sent till July 4 to all Facebook users in the country that are eligible to vote.

According to sources, in the last five years, electors increased by 16 per cent (from 5,60,91,973 to 6,55,46,101 in Bengal), indicating awareness among the electors. “Here we have 100 per cent EPIC registration, hence we hope that the new electors between the age group of 18 to 20 years will effectively register through this process,” said one of the sources.